Toronto residents can still expect a property tax increase to raise a billion dollars for transit if Olivia Chow is elected mayor, but the candidate says that’s dependent on a promise from Ottawa and Queen’s Park that they’ll match the investment.

“We need those two levels of government to join with us. If they say no, we will have no dollars to fix our existing subway,” said Chow. “We’ll have no dollars to buy new subway cars that are needed. Or new dollars to deal with the (subway) signals. If they say no, then we won’t spend a billion dollars.”

Chow has promised to keep property tax hikes in line with inflation.

But the candidate said she would levy an additional 1.6 per cent on top of that to pay for improved transit, borrowing a page from Mayor Rob Ford’s strategy to hike taxes to pay the extra $1 billion cost to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway into Scarborough.

Chow said Tuesday that as mayor she would save the money Ford wants to “waste” and instead build an above-ground light rail line to Scarborough, fully funded by the province, with more stops and four years earlier — not the subway most recently approved by council. She’d use that money instead for other priorities, including improving transit infrastructure to solve overcrowding, boosting bus service and, with the help of senior governments, building a downtown relief line.

“We need to mind that public purse and not spend that billion dollars that we don’t need to build that underground Scarborough line,” said Chow.

Chow made the comments to media Tuesday after she addressed about 125 people gathered in the fourth-floor ballroom at the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

“I will do what Rob Ford has done: to say (to the federal and provincial governments) that if they’re willing to join with us, to make sure there is a state-of-good-repair investment and to expand transit, we will put that money at the table,” said Chow.

She was referring to signal upgrades already underway on Line 1 Yonge-University, which, together with the new open-gangway Toronto Rocket trains, will increase the subway’s capacity 25 per cent by 2020. TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said improvements should be noticeable on parts of the line as early as this summer.

Similar upgrades are also needed on the 51-year-old Bloor-Danforth line, regardless of whether the city goes with a subway or above-ground LRT for the extension into Scarborough, said Ross. Those upgrades are not yet funded.

“That should have been done 10 years ago,” Ross said. The new system means fewer signalling problems and allows the TTC to safely run trains more closely together. The Bloor-Danforth line also needs the new trains.

Chow’s plan assumes that the Ontario government would pay for the LRT into Scarborough from the Line 2 Bloor-Danforth subway, which the province approved as one of the Transit City projects announced in 2007. That plan called for closing down and converting the obsolete Scarborough SRT to a modern LRT along the same route.

Council changed its mind about the LRT last year and voted to build a three-stop subway extension, instead of a seven-stop LRT, contributing city cash from an additional tax levy to the project, along with money from the provincial and federal governments.

Chow said Tuesday that, long-term, she would make the downtown subway relief line a priority. A Metrolinx report says shovels could be in the ground for the project in five or six years, and the line could take anywhere from 10 to 17 years to build.

The candidate also reiterated her earlier promise to improve busing immediately by 10 per cent. The $15 million a year needed for improved bus service would come from existing property tax revenues.

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